12/21/2007

Aloha

MargaretMargaret
Filed under: @ 8:32 pm

Okay, so it’s not really from poolside, and I’m certainly not Andrew, but here we go. First post from our most current vacation.

We got up at some weird dark hour Tuesday morning so we could get to the airport at 0630 (better keyboard than the Dell, but I still find punctuation to be a challenge). Since we had our seat assignments and boarding passes already we weren’t in too much of a rush, but it is a holiday trip and the airport was likely to be hysterical.

Once I’d stopped crying over the cat (he is doing okay so far, but I have, of course, been convinced that he’ll die while we’re out of town) and bullied Andrew into not lifting our suitcases since he’s still not allowed to lift anything greater than 30 pounds, we were off. Sometimes living right next door to the airport has its advantages. Got to the airport, got our luggage checked, got through security and still didn’t have a terrible long wait at the gait. Remarkable timing thus far. Got boarded, got seated and discovered that we were right in back exactly where they’d seated every child in the universe. Errrrr……

Except that we happened to be on the one flight this holiday season where none of the children had colic, none of them seemed to be having any problems with their ears, and none of them (okay, neither of the two that were sitting behind us) were kicking the seats. We were, in fact, seated in front of a little boy of about 9 or 10 and his 5-6 year old sister who were the older children in a family that seemed to be coming to Hawaii on a short vacation and house hunting expedition prior to moving to the islands. Older brother, and I very much apologize for the generalization, was absolutely the Poindexter type who was telling his sister all sorts of very serious and academic things about how the flight was organized, how planes actually manage to fly, interesting facts about the Hawaiian islands and so forth. It was absolutely hysterical when, once we were on approach to Oahu, he started pointing out to his sister bits of things on the island….. “See, Sam, that’s where the runway is, this is where we’re going to be landing, the Captain has to go past and turn around so we’re aimed the right way.” Little sister, who, in her first glimpse of Oahu got the back end of Honolulu and the early part of Pearl City and the military base that’s out that way (not anyone’s idea of a tropical paradise), cried out “That’s not what Hawaii is supposed to look like!”. Poindexter was very reassuring, emphasizing to Sam that ALL of Hawaii didn’t look like that and what did she expect an airport to look like anyway? Which did, of course, reassure her greatly. I hope this boy always continues to use his powers for good, because if he ever wanted to he could really feed his sister a line.

Not a bad flight all things considered and, as a Boeing baby I feel that this is traitorous in some way, but the Airbus A330 that we were flying on was remarkably comfortable.

Easy out of the airport, and all of a sudden I feel my brain shut off as the bright sun, blue sky, and palm trees did their work. I’m sorry to be rubbing it in and all, but when it was 36 degrees and dark until almost 0830 in Seattle and almost 80 degrees with little white poofy clouds when we hit the ground in Honolulu, the difference was so marked that I can’t NOT be just a little bit smug. And Andrew will disagree with me quite volubly, but the humidity was heavenly. Some irritating little prat at work gave me a cold late last week and I’ve started wearing motion sickness patches on any flight so the combination of the Sudafed drying out my sinuses and the scopolamine patch drying out my nose and eyes made me feel like a prune coming off the plane. The humidity was FANTASTIC!

We were both pretty wiped so really all we did Tuesday afternoon was hang at the house. I’ve been knitting quilt blocks for my mother so I napped and then knit until I ran out of yarn (I’d packed more in the box that we’d shipped but that didn’t show up until Wednesday). Quiet afternoon, that is, quiet until the nieces got home.

Caitlin and Lucy LOVE their Uncle Mushroom and things tend to be a good deal less placid around here when they’re home. Although we’ve finally managed to convince Lucy that Andrew can’t pick her up because she weighs more than 30 pounds.

I apologize, this isn’t likely to be an exotic, exciting tropical travelogue. Joan came down with a vicious pneumonia about 2 weeks ago and the great majority of what we’ve done so far has been to do a lot of helping around the house so Joan can rest, cough, drink lots of fluids, and take her antibiotics. Although it does feel good to be able to help her out like this especially since within the next 2 weeks all 5 kids and four in-laws are going to be rotating through her house.

Wrapped presents, bullied Joan into sitting down and directing where Christmas decorations were supposed to go, knit, napped, walked on the beach……Andrew has replaced the pump for Joan’s pond so she’s got her waterfall again. We’re really exciting vacationers.

Our one big night out so far was Wednesday. The evening started at the McCoy Pavilion in Ala Moana beach park which was the venue for the Voyager School Winterfest Pageant (Libby teaches, Caitlin and Lucy attend). I will restrict commentary on the evening’s entertainment. Those of you with children will be familiar with the type of entertainment to which we were….um……subjected. Those of you without children could have dental surgery without anesthesia and retain much the same memories. 😯

We ended the evening at Buca di Beppo Honolulu where I had a BIG drink featuring Bacardi, lemon, mint, and basil which was absolutely delicious and helped to resolve a lot of the remaining discomfort.

David showed up yesterday and we wandered out to the airport to get him. I really enjoy Andrew’s siblings, but there’s something about the interaction between the two brothers that is particularly entertaining. Add Tony into the mix and, well, it’s a lot of fun. This morning I got up at some dark hour to pee and was treated to three different Lenzer men snoring in three different keys. Some hours later when we were all bumping around the house doing our various things, the three of them were each singing their own individual little basso song about what it was that they were currently doing.

It’s also nice to have David around since when there’s two nieces and only Uncle Mushroom I don’t get a lot of contact time with my husband. When you add Uncle Cheeseburger into the mix I’ve got a little better chance.

Today has been another futz around the house, run errands, get things ready for Christmas, enjoy the sand, the sun, and the warm sort of day. Andrew and I saw a green sea turtle out in the surf while we were walking along Kailua beach (a very rare occurrence!) and I managed to leave the house, walk out to the retail center of Kailua, do the errands that I was needing to do, and return without getting lost. Definitely a red letter day.

Since tomorrow is Joan and Tony’s 56th wedding anniversary, we may be more exciting tomorrow, but I wouldn’t bet on it. We’ll be posting photos eventually. 🙂

2 Responses to “Aloha”

  1. Gavin Says:

    Ok, I’m jealous. But we’ll be out there in March for almost three weeks so I guess I’ll live. Tell your folks congrats on their 56th anniversary, most impressive!

  2. YakBoy Says:

    Mary Christmas to all and all that good stuff.

    I’ll have to suggest going somewhere where its 80 degrees and 90% humidity the next time anyone complains about getting dried out by scopolamine 😀

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